how can I open an sea file in OS X 10.6.8

Stuffit Expander is the correct tool to use. A .sea file is created with the full version of Stuffit and stands for Self Extracting Archive. Normally, you would just double click the file, and the wrapped code would automatically decompress the Stuffit compressed data. However, .sea files are also old technology and would normal require a PowerPC CPU to run. Being in Snow Leopard, it should still work to do that, assuming you installed Rosetta.

Failing to open the file by double clicking through Rosetta's PPC emulator, or the free Stuffit Expander would lead me to believe the file is damaged.

You can install Rosetta by inserting the second gray disk your Mac came with and running the optional items installer package. Deselect all but Rosetta and install it.

Otherwise, you can launch anything that is a PowerPC only app. If Rosetta isn't installed, Snow Leopard will tell you it needs to install it. Click OK and OS X will download and install Rosetta.

I use Snow Leopard on occasion to open older .sea files, or I just use the Stuffit Expander in the Mavericks or Yosemite. They all work, so I know it's not an OS X issue.

If there's anything you feel you wouldn't mind someone else seeing, you could try sending one of them to at retoucher at jklstudios dot com . I'll see if I can open one here.

Old Pagemaker files will open in InDesign, but I suppose that partly depends on how old they are. Adobe notes the issues here. It tells you what layout items will or won't be correctly translated. To open them in the InDesign CC apps requires opening the Pagemaker file in the CS6 version of InDesign first, saving it as an InDesign document, and then open that in InDesign CC.

I wish you luck then. Hopefully, you'll find a way to get at them.

I had a handful of older Freehand documents that couldn't be opened correctly in Illustrator. I even had the last version of Freehand to open them with, and they wouldn't open correctly there, either. While I would have liked to get them correctly converted and saved in a newer format, they also weren't anything I couldn't live without, so I finally just deleted them. Can't goad myself to try again if I no longer have them. 🙂

Really, really old Pagemaker files require quite a bit of fiddling, IIRC. There is a Pagemaker 3.X converter that I have stashed away on my old MDD 867 that I have used to convert a few ancient files to something that Pagemaker 6 can open. Then the PM 6 files have to be opened in InDesign. I don't know how far back you can go with it. I started using Pagemaker with version 1.5, on a Mac Plus. I remember that it sometimes took several minutes just to go to a different page in a document. Good times… I don't know if that converter would help with something as far back as PM 2, let alone 1.5.

But you definitely need an old Mac and that converter to get anywhere.

They were old and mostly unimportant. No real loss.

As I mentioned, it was the last version of Freehand, which is the same one you show; Freehand MX (version 11.0.2) running under Snow Leopard. I still have it, just don't need Freehand anymore.

Whoops! Forgot to answer your other question. I don't remember how old they were; i.e., what version of Freehand they were created under originally.

Anyway, it was incorrect to say they wouldn't open correctly in Freehand. The problem was they couldn't be exported to any other vector editable file format that looked the same as the original. There were things missing, filled incorrectly, etc. I could correctly export them to a raster format such as TIFF, but that didn't do me much good since they were really only useful as vector art.

Kurt Lang wrote:

Whoops! Forgot to answer your other question. I don't remember how old they were; i.e., what version of Freehand they were created under originally.

Anyway, it was incorrect to say they wouldn't open correctly in Freehand. The problem was they couldn't be exported to any other vector editable file format that looked the same as the original. There were things missing, filled incorrectly, etc. I could correctly export them to a raster format such as TIFF, but that didn't do me much good since they were really only useful as vector art.

Yes, that was the answer I was expecting...

Freehand users are a major subset of those who I continue to assist for them to access their Freehand library of documents in a post-Snow Leopard world with the virtualization of Snow Leopard Server. They, and college students utilizing CD-ROMs that come with their textbooks (primarily from Pearson), satisfy the two criteria that drives two members of this forum crazy:

1) There is no upgrade to their existing progrem (Freehand or CD-ROM) that will open and run without Rosetta; and

2) There is no suitable 3rd party application that will properly open these files.

I still advise them that this solution is a ticking time bomb and that they must face the day that the solution will not work properly. For college students, the time purchased is usually enough. For Freehand users, there is no real long-term solution. Some tell me they print out their documents and scan them, which is obviously much manual labor time!

I still advise them that this solution is a ticking time bomb and that they must face the day that the solution will not work properly.

Absolutely! Trying to hand onto those old documents may be necessary, but they should find a way out of Freehand sooner rather than later. Though I imagine they're running into the same thing I did. You can't export them to any other vector format that can be opened correctly in Illustrator, or other current vector editing app. Unless, that is, they're really simple. I tried every possible export option Freehand had. None of them worked other than raster formats.

Which would save the other users you work with a heck of a lot of time if they did that rather than scanning a print out. Let Freehand create the file. You can enter 300 dpi, or any other resolution you want the TIFF or JPEG to be. Why waste all that extra time with the scanner to get to the same end result? A raster image.

Kurt Lang wrote:

I still advise them that this solution is a ticking time bomb and that they must face the day that the solution will not work properly.

Which would save the other users you work with a heck of a lot of time if they did that rather than scanning a print out. Let Freehand create the file. You can enter 300 dpi, or any other resolution you want the TIFF or JPEG to be. Why waste all that extra time with the scanner to get to the same end result? A raster image.

Not being a Freehand user (although I play one on TV! hahaha 😁), please explain your last paragraph in more detail.

Are you saying this output file would be exactly the same as the scanned file and openable in other Adobe program?

please explain your last paragraph in more detail.

With any Freehand document open, choose Export (can't be exact, I don't have it installed). Among the various options, you can save the file as a TIFF or JPEG. Fill in the resolution you want it to have and save the file.

Are you saying this output file would be exactly the same as the scanned file and openable in other Adobe program?

Yup. The resulting export is just a plain ol' TIFF or JPEG any raster image editor can open.

Wow: deleted the files - harsh!

Which version of Freehand did you use to try to open them? Which version were they created in ?

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